Whether you know it as poppy seed swirl bread, makowiec, Mohnstrudel, makovnjaÄ�a, or something else altogether, and whether you eat it for Easter, Christmas, Purim, or none of the above, this lightly sweetened yeast bread swirled with sweetened poppy seed filling is a really special treat. Poppy seeds are a common ingredient in Central and Eastern European desserts, from breads and cakes to cookies and puddings, and I find poppy seed fillings to be a really lovely change from American standards like chocolate and peanut butter. Because poppy seed bread is a treat enjoyed in so many different countries (including Austria, Poland, Bosnia, Hungary, and Ukraine, just for starters), it can vary widely in sweetness and richness. Not to be confused with a cake or pastry, this recipe yields a light yeasted roll that’s on the not-so-sweet side. My filling includes raisins because I first made this bread with leftover hamantaschen filling and liked how it turned out, but it’s adaptable: depending on your tastes, you can add a splash of rum, or reduce the liquid and replace the sugar with agave, or replace the walnuts with a tablespoon of vegan butter. You can even buy a can of pre-made poppy […]

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Snow got you down? Give this coconut curry carrot soup a try. It’s quick and simple and pretty much guaranteed to brighten your day. One of the first tricks I learned as a young vegan was that everything tastes better curried. Are you a new vegan who doesn’t know how to cook? Curry stir-fry is what’s for dinner! Is your tofu scramble insufferably bland? Dump some curry powder on it! Bored with your nutritional yeast-topped popcorn? Just add curry powder! Curry powder got me through a lot of hard times, but as my cooking skills (marginally) improved over the years, I largely stopped using it. A couple of months ago, though, I made a nice Thai dish using curry paste (the indisputable adult alternative to curry powder). I was looking for something to do with the leftover paste when I came across a recipe for a curried carrot soup. Let’s be clear: I love all kinds of green juices, but I just can’t get on board with unadulterated carrot juice. Hence, I was skeptical about trying a soup that’s 90{ae720e0b436026f867bfa0c31185c2252a138f27e85f5f152ec5acc1c10a8cc9} carrot — but I’m so glad I did. Ever since that day, I’ve been making this soup about once a […]

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As many of you know, I live in New Haven, home to the only pizza worth eating, and more Italian-American bakeries than you can shake a stick at. I’ve peered many-a-time into their glass bakery cases, spilling over with all manner of pretty pink, green, brown and white cookies, and cursed the fact that they all contain animal products. This year, my holiday cookie baking was influenced by these pretty displays, featuring these citrus-flavored anginettes and those cookies sometimes known as Italian butter nuts. I really can’t say for sure how authentic these anginetti are. Over the course of a very-scientific hour-long survey of anginette recipes on the Internet, I concluded that about 80{ae720e0b436026f867bfa0c31185c2252a138f27e85f5f152ec5acc1c10a8cc9} of these recipes indicate that anginetti are “lemon drop cookies,” while another 10{ae720e0b436026f867bfa0c31185c2252a138f27e85f5f152ec5acc1c10a8cc9} call them “orange juice cookies,” and still another 10{ae720e0b436026f867bfa0c31185c2252a138f27e85f5f152ec5acc1c10a8cc9} combine lemon and orange juice and/or anise extract. While I’m pretty stoked on this lemon version, I bet these tender little bites would taste great no matter how you flavor them. If you’ve never had them, these small, spherical cookies are often described as being “cakey,” but I’d say these are better described as “soft and dense.” They’re glazed, but they aren’t super-sweet or […]

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These chocolate hazelnut thumbprint cookies are unsurprisingly delicious yet surprisingly easy to assemble, and the work goes especially quickly if you’re making a batch of my chocolate-filled peanut butter blossoms at the same time. No handmade chocolate kisses required! One afternoon each December, I sit down and make a list of all the cookies and candies that will appear on that year’s Christmas cookie plate. I have probably five tried-and-true recipes that I make every year — sometimes swapping nuts or extracts just for fun — and then I try a small selection of the most special-looking recipes I’ve absentmindedly bookmarked over the course of the previous year. This might sound like a simple task, but I …  have a bookmarking problem. As my last computer sludged toward its final days, I was convinced that every new bookmark I added to my browser was contributing to its molasses-slow state of inoperability. While my curiosity is easily piqued, I just have terribly little time. Rare are the days that I see a good-looking recipe and can head straight to the kitchen to make it, so whenever I see something that looks delicious, or incorporates an interesting combination of flavors or cooking […]

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This recipe is adapted from one that appears in an old Iowa church cookbook called World’s Best Sugar Cookies. Iowan church ladies are known to wax hyperbolic about plenty of things — recipes in these cookbooks for “green salad,” for instance, typically involve neon-hued Jello and no vegetables of any kind. But these cookies are the Real Deal. These are the cookies I helped my mother decorate every Christmas while I was a kid, so they’re really the gold-standard by which I judge all other cut-out cookies. They are tender and flavorful, so unlike the many other sugar cookies I’ve sampled over the years, which by and large have been hard and dry, ultra-sweet or flour-flavored. They’re great fresh, but I actually like them even more after they’ve been sitting in an air-tight container for a day or two, the cookies softening just slightly with the icing’s moisture. Growing up, we always decorated these cookies with vanilla icing, but I’ve found that adding a little almond extract really complements the rich sweetness of the cookies. 5.0 from 2 reviews Print Vegan Sugar Cookies Prep time:  3 hours Cook time:  1 hour Total time:  4 hours Serves: a lot!   Ingredients For […]

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